Sixty-five

The next morning, Blaine woke up on the couch with a dry mouth and a throbbing head. He thought of Wu, the sight of his slashed neck and of all that fresh blood.

Then he remembered the postcard.

Riffling through his pockets, he found it, squinted at the writing and the scrawled map. The idea of holding an object that had belonged to Bogart would, in more normal circumstances, have filled him with wonder.

But the murder at Hotel Marrakech had left him unable to appreciate normality.

He sat on the couch, his bare feet pressed onto the antique Turkish kelim, and he took a deep breath.

Just then, Ghita came through from the bedroom, her hair damp from the shower. She smiled, said something kindly, but Blaine didn’t hear. He was staring into space.

‘Can I make you some coffee?’ she said, repeating herself.

‘Huh? What? Oh, yeah, thanks.’

‘How do you take it?’

Blaine turned, but his eyes didn’t change focus.

‘I have to get home to America,’ he said, all of a sudden. ‘I’m not safe here. I don’t know what I was thinking. Casablanca, the Casablanca isn’t my Casablanca. It’s not the movie. It’s nothing like it – there’s no Humphrey Bogart, Ingrid Bergman, or Paul Henreid. There’s no Vichy Regime or refugee crisis, no German soldiers, or spies, or Rick’s Café.’

Ghita passed Blaine his coffee.

‘But there’s danger,’ she said.

‘That’s the understatement of the decade.’

‘I’m just thinking of protecting you,’ said Ghita. ‘In Morocco protection comes from people with power, and that’s why we need to find the police commissioner.’

The American hunched forward gloomily.

‘I know you’re in a tight spot, with your father,’ he said, ‘but I could be implicated for murder. This is a foreign country, and I’m out of my depth.’ He paused, lifted his face, his eyes swollen with fatigue and with fear. ‘Hell, haven’t you seen Midnight Express?’ he asked.

‘Go take a hot shower,’ Ghita replied, ‘and you’ll feel a lot better.’

Blaine sighed.

‘OK.’

Fifteen minutes later he was scrubbed clean, with a lavender-coloured bath towel wrapped around his waist. He padded through into the sitting-room, and hunted through his bin-liner for the cleanest dirty shirt, smelling them one by one.

All of a sudden he stopped, put the plastic sack down and picked up his satchel, as if in urgent need to check something.

‘Oh my God!’ he yelled, his hands tearing fast through odds and ends. ‘It was in here last night, I know it was!’

‘What was?’

‘My passport! Jesus! I don’t believe it!’

Standing over in the kitchen area, Ghita slipped a coffee capsule into the Nespresso machine and pressed the button.

‘I’m sure it’s there,’ she said over the whirring sound.

‘No, no, it’s not!’

‘Did you leave it at Hotel Marrakech?’

‘No, I brought it with me. I know I did! It was right here, in this little pouch.’

‘You must have dropped it on the way over. We could retrace your steps.’

Blaine screwed up his face.

‘Do you really think anyone would leave an American passport where it was if they found it on the street? Anyway, I trudged around for hours before coming here. All I can do is to go to the consulate and plead for my life.’

Ghita hurried over.

‘I warn you against going to the authorities, any authorities,’ she said. ‘The police commissioner is the only one who can help you.’

‘And he’s not the authorities?’

Ghita stuck out a hand and nudged it side to side.

‘There’s authorities and there’s authorities,’ she said hesitantly. ‘And he’s the right kind of authorities. He can help you.’

‘You mean, he can help us?’